CHAPTER 3
It was more than five years since I had stayed at the house while Mother entertained one of her visitors. In that time I must have changed a lot in how I saw things, for it seemed to me, as soon as I stepped inside, that the man sitting in our best chair was quite different from all the others that I had met.
As I opened the door he gave a great nervous jerk upwards in his seat, then abruptly swiveled in the chair to find out who had come in. I saw a huge head, thick-bearded and dark-haired. It surmounted massive shoulders, and a bigger chest than that of any spaceman I had ever seen. His face was very pale, and free of the usual spacer broken veins and burns. Instead it wore an odd expression of surprise and caution.
But the biggest difference was in Mother.
"About time," she said. "Mr. Enderton, this is my son, Jay. He'll give you a hand to carry your things upstairs. He's big and strong."
Not one word about where I had been, or what I had been doing until so late. Which was just fine by me. But odder than this was Mother's attitude towards the visitor. There was none of the glow about her that I had always seen with other men guests, no sideways cocking of the head, no little touches or quick glances. Instead she sounded very practical and businesslike as she pointed behind me to the doorway.
"Get to it,Jay," she said. "It's too much for me."
I had noticed the great box when I came in—I could hardly miss it, the way that it filled half the entrance. If I was supposed to carry that upstairs, I would need lots of help. But Paddy Enderton was already standing up and coming toward me. Seated, his size had been deceptive. He possessed the head and torso of a giant, but his legs proved to be so short that he was no taller than me.
"You're Jay, then," he said gruffly. He stared hard, measuring my build, but made no move to shake my hand. "Aye, you seem strong enough. Let's do it."
I could see the remains of dinner still on the table, and that would have been my first preference. But Enderton had gone past me, and was already reaching down to a handle on the side of the box. He lifted it easily, one-handed. I took the other handle without much hope that I would be able to move it at all. To my amazement, the chest came easily off the ground.
I wondered, had Enderton really needed my help?
Yes, he had. We headed up the stairs without my feeling much strain, but Enderton gasped and gulped at every step. At the top, to my surprise, he took a turn to the left along the landing.
To explain that surprise, I have to say that our house had three bedrooms. The one at the front, looking out over the lake, was my room. The two at the back were Mother's bedroom and a small guest bedroom right next to it, where visitors always slept.
The left turn off the landing led to my room, and only to my room. And when we went into it, I found that all my belongings had disappeared.
"It's all right." Mother had followed us up the stairs. "Mr. Enderton said he absolutely had to have the front room. You're in the guest bedroom, Jay. I moved your things. It won't be for long."
"How long?" It was ridiculous, moving me out of my own room for just a couple of days.
Now mother did look at Enderton, but it was nothing more than simple inquiry.
He had put down his side of the box and straightened up, the breath rattling in his throat. "I told you," he wheezed at last. "I'm not sure." He had one hand pressed to his massive rib cage, and his face was even paler than before.
"I'm not sure," he repeated after another long pause. "Maybe three or four weeks."
He said nothing more, but stood there scowling and panting, and glancing every second or two at the sealed box. He was clearly waiting, and after a few more seconds Mother nodded at me. "Come on, then," she said, and led the way back downstairs.
"He's horrible," I burst out, as soon as we were in the living-room and out of earshot. "Why are you letting him stay with us for even a night, let alone a month?"
Mother hesitated. She had been loading a plate with cold meat and bread. "Now then, Jay," she said mildly. She handed me the plate. "Paddy Enderton is not what I expected, that I'll admit. But he's going to pay more than anyone ever paid. And for nothing, too."
"It's not for nothing! You're feeding him, aren't you? And you let him have my room."
"That's . . . different."
"It sure is. Why didn't you leave me with Uncle Toby until he was gone?"
"So you could go sailing off across the lake again, and worry your old uncle sick?" But Mother sounded more thoughtful than angry. "I just feel better with you here, and Uncle Duncan, too. Eat your dinner, now, and clear up afterwards. I'm going off to bed."
So there was another surprise, something for me to ponder as I ate a rapid and solitary meal, and then washed up. Not only was I going to be around while Mother had a visitor, but Uncle Duncan would be dropping in, too. That had never happened before.
None of this was enough consolation, though, for my being deprived of my own bedroom. My dislike of Paddy Enderton grew when I went up to the guest room and found all my things scattered around haphazardly on shelves and floor.
That was not enough to keep me awake, once I lay down on the bed. The day had been too long, and too full. I relived the visit to Muldoon Port, the grandeur of the space launch, and the night journey back, with the boat whispering its way across the dark lake. My final thought was again of the sailboat. It was still moored at Toltoona. Tomorrow I would have to walk over there, and sail it home.
* * *
That thought came into my head again as soon as I awoke. It was barely light. The house was quiet. If I hurried I could be to Toltoona and back before Mother even knew that I had gone.
I dressed quickly, stole downstairs, and headed for the door—and jumped a foot in the air when a silent form came at me from the kitchen.
It was Paddy Enderton, a big sharp-pointed carving knife in his right hand. "Hah!" he said. "It's you." He lowered the knife. "I'm just getting myself a bite of breakfast. What are you doing up so early?"
"I left my sailboat over at Toltoona last night. I have to go and get it back."
"You sail, do you?" he said, after an awkward silence. "Going to be a sailor, are you, or a fisherman?"
"I hope not." I wanted to be away, but I had to be civil. This morning he was at least talking to me as though I was a human being. "I'd rather be a spacer," I added. "Like you."
"What's that?" The knife jerked upward again, its point toward me. "Who said I was a spacer?"
"Nobody."
"Do you think I look like a spacer?"
"No, you don't." I was scared by his eyes even more than the knife. "But you sound like one, the way you have trouble breathing. And all Mother's other guests, they've been spacers."
"Other guests?" His pale face reddened, and the breath wheezed in his throat. "You have spacer guests here?"
I wished that Mother was around to explain, but it was long before her usual rising time. So it was up to me. I told him the simple truth, that we had guests now and again, ever since I remembered, and that they had all been spacers. But it had been four months since one was here.
That last fact seemed to calm him, and he slowly nodded his massive head. "I should have checked," he said, "before I came. Too late now."
"Are you a spacer?" I asked.
Instead of answering he walked through into the kitchen and came back carrying a sandwich of bread and hot bacon.
"Here." He handed it to me. "Eat that. I don't have the appetite now." He studied me as I took a first bite. "So you're often in Toltoona, eh? And you're a sailor, too, who wants to be a spacer. Did you ever think to sail right across Lake Sheelin, to Muldoon Port?"
"I did it just yesterday," I said proudly. "I saw a space launch, close up."
"Did you now." He smiled for the first time, an awkward grimace of stained teeth. "Well, Jay Hara, you're quite the adventurer. Would there be any problem if you sailed across again, for me?"
Problem? It would please me more than anything in the world, but still there was a problem, a big one.
"Mother doesn't like me to sail far away from the shore."
"That's for pleasure. If it was well-paid, though, that would be another matter."
My reluctance to discuss the idea with Mother must have showed, because he went on, "Of course, I'd be the one asking her. And if you did a little something extra for me now and then, there'd be other stuff coming your way that's more than wages. Things you'll like, you wanting to be a spacer. See here. I'm giving you this right now."
He pulled from his pocket a coin-sized flat circle, like a tiny plate of stiff paper, and handed it across to me. I examined it on both sides, and saw nothing.
"Well?" said Enderton.
"It's just a flat piece of cardboard."
"You think so?" He seemed pleased. "Grab your jacket and come with me."
He led the way outside the house. It was a fine morning of late fall, the temperature hardly risen above freezing. In another week or two winter would arrive dramatically, with biting north winds and soon after that a thin coat of ice along the shallows of the lake. But today we could still stand outside without discomfort.
Enderton stared along the road to Toltoona, and then across the deserted surface of Lake Sheelin. He examined them closely, before he moved next to me and pointed his thick finger at the disk.
"Now, you want to be a spacer and not a fisherman, I know that, but I'll bet you still like to fish?" He saw my nod. "So let's say you're out on the lake, fishing. And suppose you're still out when it gets dark, and you come across a place where there's something good on your line every time you stick it down in the water. You'd love to be able to find the same spot again, but there's not a landmark visible to fix your place. Then you press this."
His index finger stabbed at a little red patch on one side of the card. So far as I could see, nothing at all happened.
"So now you go away, anywhere you like. Come on." Enderton started walking along the road. I followed him, swallowing down the last of my sandwich, until we were a couple of hundred paces from the house. There he stopped.
"Now, say that tomorrow night you want to find your way back to that same place. Then all you do is press this." He touched a blue patch on the opposite side of the card. "And see what you get."
The front of the card had suddenly changed. Before it had been blank, now it was divided in two by a bright yellow arrow. In the middle sat a number.
"That points the direction you have to go, to get right back where you want to be." Enderton rotated the card, to show that the arrow turned to point always in the same direction. "And the figures in the middle, they tell you how far you have to go to reach your starting point. You just follow the arrow. Go ahead. Do it."
I did as he suggested, and found myself led right back to the place were we had started. When I arrived at the right point outside the house, the arrow vanished and the little disk buzzed softly.
I turned the card over. It was thin as a fingernail, and the underside was no more than a repeat of the top. Paddy Enderton laughed, then doubled over with a horrible coughing fit.
"You'll see nothing there," he said, when he had recovered. "And don't try to break it open to look, or it will never work again."
"I've never seen anything like this."
"Of course you haven't." He gave me a leer and a wink. "And no more has anyone else around here. That's spacer work—and not the sort you'll find around Muldoon Port, either. But you see how useful it would be, to fix a position in space. And it's yours. You help me when I need it, and there'll be more things like this for you. Are we on, Jay?"
He held out his hand. After a few moments I took it. His big black-haired paw swallowed up my whole hand, and I pulled away as soon as I could.
"If Mother says it's all right to cross the lake, I'll do it." Attractive as it had sounded at first, I was having second thoughts. I hadn't liked Paddy Enderton when I first met him, and gifts or no gifts I decided that I didn't like him now. "Mother will have to agree."
"Sure. I'll square that with her, no problem. But there's other things, too, that your mother doesn't need to know about." He leaned close to me. "You're going off to Toltoona, right?"
"I should be on the way already." I glanced at the sun. "I wanted to be back before Mother was up."
"Don't worry about that. I'll tell her that you ran a little errand for me." He reached into his pocket, and handed me more money than I saw in a good month. "This is for today's work. Before you collect your boat, take a walk right through Toltoona. Every street of it. How many inns are there?"
"Three."
"Take a look in each one. You've seen plenty of spacers, right?"
I nodded.
"Keep your eyes open for anyone who looks or sounds like a spacer. If you see one, take a good note of him—how he's dressed, what he's doing, if he has any scars or strangeness. Don't tell anyone what you're doing, and don't make it obvious. And when you come back, you tell me all about what you've seen and heard."
He gave me a hard push, as though urging me along the road to Toltoona, then just as sharply grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back again. He leaned very close and turned me to him, so that I could see every whisker around his full mouth, and every vein in his bloodshot eyes.
"And there's one more thing, Jay." His voice was a hoarse whisper, and his stale breath filled my nostrils. "One more thing to look out for real special. And if you see it, or you hear talk of it, you come right back here at once, without waiting one second for anything. Look for a man with no arms, carrying on his back another man with no legs. The two-half-man, they call him. Anyone says those words, or talks about Dan and Stan, you let me know real quick. And then there'll be more money for you than you've ever seen in your life."
* * *
Just what Paddy Enderton told Mother, I don't know. But a careful walk through the middle of Toltoona, and a slow sail back against the wind, kept me away from the house until lunchtime. When I hurried in Mother was standing at the stove; she said not a word about my lateness.
Duncan West was sitting with his long legs under the kitchen table. He nodded to me. "Food. A healthy young lad can smell it a mile off."
Not quite true, but I could certainly smell it now. And I could see it, too, smoking hot and ready to serve. It was my favorite, peppered lake shellfish.
I went across to join Uncle Duncan.
"So, Jay," he went on. "How's life for my bold sailor lad?"
As usual he treated me like a six-year-old, and a none-too-bright one at that. Typical, although before I was ten I'd become sure that Mother was a good deal smarter than Duncan West. She didn't seem to notice, or at least to mind, because he did a lot of repairs around the house and when he was dealing with mechanical things even I admitted that he was unbeatable.
Fortunately I didn't have to answer, because before I could even sit down Mother was in front of me with a loaded tray.
"Second sitting for you, Jay. Ten more minutes. If you're going to be an assistant to Mr. Enderton, you can start assisting now. He want to eat in his room. Take this up to him."
It was another difference from Mother's usual visitors. Everyone in the past had eaten with her, and usually there had been a good deal of talk and laughter and fancy ceremony.
"Eat in my room, you mean," I said, not quite under my breath. But she did not respond, and I took the tray from her and hurried upstairs. If it was going to be another ten minutes before I could get anything to eat, I could brief Enderton on what I had been doing.
The door was closed, and with no hand free I banged on it with my elbow.
"Who's that?" Enderton's voice was gruff and unfriendly.
"Me. Jay. I'm back."
"Ah."
The door opened, a hand grabbed my elbow and dragged me sharply in, and the door slammed behind me.
All he was wearing above the waist was a sort of leather vest, unbuttoned all the way down the front. It made the power of his arms and shoulders and chest even more obvious. It also showed, running from above his left nipple all the way down to the bottom of his right ribs, a deep, rough-edged scar. The ribs that it crossed were broken and twisted and gnarled in among the thick layers of muscle. The wound, whenever and wherever it had happened, must have healed without medical treatment. It was a wonder that Paddy Enderton had survived.
But he had, and there was still power in those great hands. He grabbed the tray from me, and at the same time pushed me easily back into a chair.
"What did you see?" He leaned over me. "Tell it quick."
I did, but there was not much to tell. I had walked along every street, and into each of the three inns, and nowhere had I seen anything remotely suspicious. There was the occasional sprained ankle, and even a merchant with his arm in a sling, but that was a long way from armless and legless men.
While I talked, Enderton picked up the tray, ate, and grunted. He ignored all utensils and worked with his hands and teeth, cracking the hard pink shellfish cases casually between thumb and finger, then noisily sucking out the tender white meat.
"Good enough," he grunted when I was finished. "You sure you covered every street?"
"Every one in the town."
"Here, then." He fumbled clumsily in his pocket, and seemed surprised when he came up empty-handed. "I'll pay you later. Tomorrow, I want you to sail across and take the same sort of look at Muldoon Port."
"If the weather's good," I said, "And if Mother says it's allowed."
"Mmph."
That hardly sounded like agreement, but I stood up. I was keen to go back downstairs, and not only because I was hungry. This didn't feel like my room any more, filled as it was with the smell of stale sweat and liquor.
"She'll say yes." But he stood between me and the door, and he showed no sign of moving. He was breathing heavily, and snorting through his nose. "You may not always see them together, you know. Sometimes they do things separate, quite ordinary things. You have to watch out for each of them. Understand? Each of them."
I finally realized who he was talking about. "What do they look like?"
"Why, like each other. Understand? They're brothers, and they were a whole lot alike. More in looks, though, than in behavior. But then there's the accident, see, and one loses his arms, and the other his legs. Understand? Not alike any more. Two years ago, that was, out on Connaught, same place where I got mine." Enderton rubbed at his twisted rib cage, then turned to pick up a half-empty glass of dark liquid from the dresser. He took a big gulp. "We all three got mangled—and we were the lucky ones. We lived. Understand?"
I said nothing, and he went on with never a pause, "So if you see a man with no legs, that's Stan. Not too bad, he is, compared with the other. But you come and tell me about it anyway. Understand?"
I understood at least one thing. Paddy Enderton was drunk, dead drunk, more drunk than I had ever seen anyone.
"But if you see the man with no arms," he went on, snuffling and snorting and rubbing at his tangled beard. "The man with no arms, that's Dan. And then it's God help me."
He put his hands up to cover his face, and I took the chance to edge around him and to the door. I opened it as quietly as I could, but he heard me, and turned around to grab my arm.
He pulled me close, and glared into my eyes. "If it's Dan, see, then it's God help me. And it's God help you, Jay Hara. And it's God help everybody. Because nothing else can."
He released my arm. I stumbled backward through the door and almost fell downstairs.
His final words followed me. They were just what I needed to put me off my dinner.
Except that they didn't, not the way they might now, because at that time I didn't know what Dan and Stan were. They were just names.
And anyway, the food was peppered lake shellfish. I hadn't found anything that could put me off that.
Not then. I wonder if I would still eat it, knowing what I do now.